Talk: Theory of Luck

Contents

Introduction (tweaked 6.4.14)

Is this universe behaving randomly or non-randomly? This question is often linked to another question, did everything come about by sheer happenstance or is there a GOD? Everyone wants luck, but not everyone believes in it. Luck enables us to accomplish in a very short time what we thought would take ages. We plan to travel overseas to meet an important person, only to learn that by what we call "luck", this person is coming to where we live and can meet us here. For years we have dreamt about doing something special but our financial or other circumstances never permitted, until by luck we are offered the opportunity without effort and expense. We need some essential information, but do not know where to look or how to find it, then by luck that information reaches us without our even taking initiative. We are eager to speak with a person to share an important bit of news and by luck the person calls us or arrives physically just at that moment. A seemingly chance encounter opens up a new career opportunity, creates a monetary windfall, or brings us into contact with a very special person. Life is full of such inexplicable coincidences or are they mere coincidences? All of us welcome them when they happen and many secretly pray for more of them to occur, but still many of us doubt whether luck really exists.

What does The Secret have to tell us about luck? It tells us that there is no such thing as luck. Or rather it tells us that we can create luck in our own lives by applying the method of The Secret.

Science of Randomness/Chance vs. Non-randomness (tweaked 6.4.14)

What we call luck, many scientists calls chance. One of the reasons many people may doubt the power of The Secret is because of their belief in a world governed by chance. Does science teach us that the world is governed by mechanical laws and unpredictable chance occurrences or like chaos theory states, "There is an appearance of randomness in chaotic systems"? Science studies the factors or causes for each type of event. Wherever it cannot find a cause or predict an outcome from the causes it has identified, it may attribute the outcome to chance or may choose to recognize that "Everything is connected" (chaos theory). Scientific philosopher Karl Popper argues that it is impossible to prove the existence of chance scientifically. When scientists refer to the action of chance, what they really mean is that they do not know the laws that are operative or the precise conditions under which those laws are working, and therefore they observe what appears to be random behavior. The roll of the dice appears to be chance because we do not have sufficient knowledge to predict the outcome. So, our perception of chance really reflects a lack of knowledge.

Malcolm Hollick explains that science reduces all phenomena to the interaction of laws and chance because it starts with the assumption that we live in an inanimate mechanistic world without consciousness. Science focuses only on what Aristotle termed material and efficient causes to explain how things actually occur, but excludes the examination of formal and final causes which explain the ‘why?’

Like many scientist, many other people believe that chance plays a big role in the outcome of their personal lives. Each of us tries to understand and explain the reasons for our accomplishments in terms of our talents, capacities, knowledge, skill, resourcefulness, contacts, hard work, and karma. Where these fail to achieve the result, we often attribute it to bad luck. When something happens without our expecting it or consciously doing anything to make it happen, we sometimes attribute it to good luck. A chance meeting with an old acquaintance or total stranger, an interesting article in the newspaper, a precious information overheard, a cancelled flight, misplaced article, bad weather that alters our plans, and countless other events appear to happen by themselves for no apparent reason to some. If they result in a favorable outcome, we say we were lucky. If they lead to failure, we speak of bad luck. Is there a cause-and-effect relationship of luck/karma to reality?

The Secret of Luck (tweaked 6.4.14)

The Secret provides an explanation for luck or at least a method to create it. It tells us that the universe responds to what we think and feel according to the Law of Attraction. If we want to attract luck in our lives, we should think positively and confidently, aspire intensely, feel enthusiastically and harmoniously about ourselves, our lives, the people we interact with and everything that happens to us. It also tells us that if our lives seem to be plagued by ill luck or misfortune, it is because our own mental preoccupations, fears, doubts, anxieties, self-pity, resentments and frustrations are attracting the very opposite of what we consciously aspire for. Luck and misfortune are mirrors which life holds up reflecting what we are inside or what is happening inside.

According to The Secret, there is no such thing as chance. Everything depends on us, on what we think and feel inside. Everything can come under our control, if only we become conscious. The Secret is based on a profound spiritual knowledge: The inner determines the outer.

We speak of luck when something good suddenly materializes, often forgetting that we have aspired intensely for this very result and perhaps then forgotten it. In The Secret, entrepreneur John Assaraf relates how one day he realized that the dream house he was now living in was an exact reproduction of the house he had dreamed of owning many years before.

These conclusions are reinforced by the work of British psychologist Richard Wiseman, who has studied the phenomenon of luck for the past eight years. He found that people can actually increase their luck by a conscious effort. Unsurprisingly, the most important factor he identified is a positive outlook toward life.

The Theory of Luck equation (added 6.4.14)

"I don't believe in luck, but I do believe in assigning a value to things." - Noble prize winning John Nash, math professor at Princeton from the movie A Beautiful Mind

According to scientist Brad Watson, Nash was both wrong and right. As author of the booklet, There Are No Coincidences - there is synchronism, design and alignment[1], Watson has produced the following equation for his Theory of Luck...